


A Moment's Rest

by orphan_account



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Can someone slap Leorio for me I don't have the heart to do it anymore, Eye Scream, M/M, NB Kurapika in the house, Other, Trans guys having sex...trans guys having sex...my muscles...my muscles...involuntarily flex..., You've heard of Hard Gay now get ready for Sad Bisexual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 01:54:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13847607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Leorio fails to make a friend in med school. He's unsure of whether or not this is the first time that's happened.





	A Moment's Rest

“That’s not how you should be holding that knife.”

 

Leorio’s face scrunched. “Wha…” He processed the face that went with that voice. “Huh!?”

 

“I said, that’s not how you hold a knife in combat.” Kurapika was sitting up against the wall, knees bent and hands clasped around his shins. “Unless you’re fighting a bowl of…”

 

“Do you think you need to babysit me, too?” Leorio snorted and turned back to the clock on the wall. “Wait until we get out of here! I’ll teach you a thing or two about knife grip.”

 

“Hmph.” It sounded like Kurapika had let his legs straighten on the floor. “You won’t get far in medical school with a mentality like that.”

 

“You think they grade you on your knife fighting in medical school?” Leorio rolled his eyes and flipped his knife blade between his fingers. It would have been fast enough to impress his friends back home, but it didn’t make Kurapika’s face shifted.

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Kurapika said. “You’re lucky I’m not a girl. You wouldn’t have made it off the ship.”

 

“Ha!” Leorio leaned back in his chair and flipped his knife handle back around his hand so he could catch it in his palm. “You’re not bad-looking as you are. It’s your attitude that turns me off.”

 

He grinned as Kurapika stared down at his fists, which were suddenly balled in his lap.

 

“So,” Leorio said, turning around to straddle the back of his chair. “How  _ do  _ you hold a knife in combat?”

 

***

 

Dr. Short paced across the front of the classroom as he talked. His voice was always a little slower during afternoon lectures, and his step was a little slower.

 

“Now, remember, people,” he said. “We’re not stabbing anybody here. Be firm, but be conscious that these are human tissues and our department can’t pay for a replacement.”

 

Leorio couldn’t remember a time when he’d been too tired to hold a knife. School was starting to drain him in a way that not even the Hunter Exam had, and these afternoon labs were killing him.

 

“All right, is everybody ready?” Dr. Short stopped to face his students and pointed his walking stick at the diagram on the board. “We’re going to make our first incision into the sclera at the point marked A.”

 

“Psst.” Chela nudged him with her elbow. “Are you okay?”

 

Leorio shook himself and straightened his spine. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m fine.”

 

The eye sitting in his dish was dark brown, long gone filmy from its time in a campus refrigerator. It was dark brown, and it had been donated by some sick guy, and it wasn’t watching him make the first cut.

 

***

 

“You have to practice going without sleep, you know.”

 

Leorio jumped out of his skin at Kurapika shaking his shoulder. He was still slumped against the tree where he’d sat down to take a brief rest. Kurapika was glaring at him.

 

“What the hell?” Leorio said.

 

“I let you take twenty minutes,” Kurapika said. “That should be enough to keep you going for another few hours.”

 

“Another few hours?” Leorio said, picking his shades up from his lap and putting them back on his nose. “Are you kidding me? I can go all night!”

 

“Mm.” Kurapika’s frown lost a little of its severity. “Good. Since I’ve been watching for danger while you’ve slept, in a few hours it will be your turn to return the favor.” In a single fluid motion, Kurapika sprang to his feet and turned his back to Leorio.

 

“Huh? Uh, sounds, uh, just fine to me!” Leorio scrambled through the reflexive check for his wallet and knife before grabbing his med kit. He had to take big, bounding strides to catch up with Kurapika’s silent footsteps.

 

Kurapika made a tiny annoyed sound. He didn’t look at Leorio.

 

“What is it this time?” Leorio said.

 

“You can tell you grew up in a city,” Kurapika said. “Nobody ever taught you how to make your feet quiet in the undergrowth.”

 

“Hmm?” Leorio watched how Kurapika was walking.

 

“Roll your feet gently along the ground,” Kurapika said, barely moving his lips and never taking his eyes off the trail ahead. “Heel to toe. One foot goes directly in front of the other.”

 

A few months ago, maybe, Leorio would have been able to pick this up in a heartbeat. The way things were currently? His stupid aching too-long ain’t-shit limbs couldn’t remember how to balance his body.

 

Kurapika wasn’t talking, but now and then he’d glance at Leorio. He’d watch him for a second, look away, watch him again. He was studying something about him. Leorio wasn’t sure if he liked it or not.

 

“You’re kind of clumsy for a Hunter applicant,” Kurapika said after maybe fifteen minutes of this.

 

“That’s not…”

 

“But it’s not consistent,” Kurapika said.

 

“No shit!” Leorio said. He could feel a flush creeping up his collar. “Why don’t you keep your eyes on the woods and stop watching me?”

 

“I’ve never seen someone do it with the injections before,” Kurapika said. “In my clan, you just said you were a boy now or a girl now or a mix now and that was that.”

 

Leorio stopped in his tracks. “Excuse me?” he said. It was too late to stop his face from turning red.

 

A self-satisfied smile ghosted across Kurapika’s face. “I had my suspicions when you didn’t call me a girl, even though you wanted to kill me,” he said. “And in Trick Tower. And...hmm.” He laughed softly to himself, turning his attention back to the trail ahead. “You probably wanted a nice strong body for the Hunter exam, huh? But instead you’re trying to keep up with growth spurts.”

 

“Hey! I’ve always been strong enough to…”

 

Kurapika held up a hand and stopped.

 

Leorio stopped, too.

 

“Leorio.” Kurapika’s voice was just above a whisper. “I want you to breathe in for a count of seven. Hold for a count of one. Breathe out for a count of eleven. Turn around and walk back the way we just came.”

Kurapika was keeping his voice quiet enough that Leorio could hear...well, kind of a whisper, kind of a hum, kind of a buzz coming from the brush around him. Maybe he wasn’t really hearing it so much as picking up the vibrations through his feet.

 

“Breathe.”

 

Kurapika wasn’t the first one to tell Leorio how to calm his body with his breathing. It was one of the basic martial arts techniques, helped slow your heart rate and keep your opponent from reading your energy too easily.

 

So why was it working better when Kurapika was telling him to do it?

 

****

 

“You know the answer.” Dr. Short had a tendency to nod with his full body. “Or at least, you gave it to me last week during the pop quiz.”

 

Leorio couldn’t remember when he’d eaten last. He’d had breakfast this morning, right? He was realizing he couldn’t remember if it was this morning or yesterday morning when he’d…

 

“It’s macular degeneration, professor.” His voice seemed to spring out of his body of its own accord. There were still days when he wasn’t used to it. There were days now when he wasn’t used to anything, when it was like he’d just been born into this huge grown body with its huge grown responsibilities and he was just trying to play catch-up. Who was pointing his scalpel at the fatty area of membrane he’d removed from this eyeball?

 

“You can see the degenerated spots here, and here,” he said. “Um. It’s caused by, uhhhh…”

 

“Most macular degeneration occurs as a secondary symptom of furniture disease,” Dr. Short said as he moved on from Leorio’s desk. “Those of you who go on to specialize in opthamology will learn more about the pathology of macular degeneration in...yes, Miss Kedo?”

 

“Can you remind me what furniture disease refers to?” she said.

 

Dr. Short leaned back on his feet and chuckled. “Why, Miss Kedo, isn’t it obvious?” he said. “It’s when your chest sinks into your drawers!”

 

The classroom erupted in laughter. Leorio felt Chela’s hand around his arm.

 

“Dude,” she said. “Your pulse is going a mile a minute. Sit down.”

 

“I’m…”

His lab partner shoved the stool into the back of his legs hard enough to force him to sit. “You can’t take care of patients if you can’t take care of yourself,” she said. “Dumbass.”

 

***

 

After walking through the jungle for a while, Leorio started to get a feel for the rhythm of the place. There was a heartbeat underneath the chorus of birds and insects, and he and Kurapika snuck their footsteps in with it.

 

It was only when the rhythm changed that the two of them began to get nervous. Once, the woods went silent completely. They booked it back the way they’d come and cut north a couple miles until they came to a clearing at the top of a steep gulch.

 

Kurapika sat down in the dryish space between a couple of tree roots and took a candy bar from his pocket. Leorio shuffled around their camp, watching the forest around them for any sign of movement.

 

“You should eat something,” Kurapika said.

 

“I’ll eat while you sleep,” Leorio said.

 

Kurapika snorted quietly. He was shaking his head, looking at his lap like he’d just thought of something very funny in an important meeting.

 

“What?” Leorio put his hands on his hips and turned to face Kurapika dead on.

 

“You shouldn’t fluster so easily if you want to be a Hunter,” Kurapika said. “You’ll make more money if you can stay level-headed no matter how excited you get.”

 

Leorio turned on his heels and walked away. “Don’t flatter yourself,” he said.

 

“If I showed you my breasts right now, you’d be completely helpless.”

 

The clinic people warned him this would happen when he started the shots. But, you know, other people also told him he’d always be ruled by female energy and the shots couldn’t change a thing. Leorio, being a scientific man, tended to listen to people on both sides of a disagreement.

 

Which is why he still caught himself off-guard by doing things like almost tripping over himself on the off-chance that Kurapika had started undressing.

 

He hadn’t. He was sitting against the tree, fully dressed, chewing the rest of his candy bar, still looking like he was trying not to laugh at a meme in front of his boss.

 

Leorio felt himself turn the reddest he had turned in a long time. He and Kurapika stared at each other. They kept staring at each other.

 

Kurapika finally motioned with his head for Leorio to come over.

 

It took a couple seconds for Leorio’s body to process the command, but he closed the few feet between him and the tree where Kurapika was resting.

 

“You should know, if we’re going to do this, I’m not a boy either,” Kurapika said, still staring Leorio in the eyes. “In my clan…” 

 

Leorio raised his eyebrows as Kurapika’s form stiffened, mouth hanging open and eyes wide.

 

“Anyway.” Kurapika sighed. “Instead of he or she you’d say ‘they’ out here.”

 

“Out here?” Leorio said.

 

“The outside world,” Kurapika said. Hi-their gaze drifted from Leorio’s eyes to the ground in front of them. “It’s…”

 

Leorio sat down beside them. “It’s fine,” he said.

 

Almost as soon as he was sitting, Kurapika had stretched himself out on the ground with his head in Leorio’s lap.

 

“You’re very easy to manipulate,” Kurapika said. “Wake me up in twenty minutes so we can get going again.”

 

***

 

Chela marched him down the sidewalk with one thin hand gripping him painfully hard by the arm. Leorio had given up on protesting a couple of blocks ago.

 

“You’re in 319, right?” Chela said.

 

“Yes, ma’am,” Leorio said. He couldn’t remember if he had taken his shorts off the drying rack or...okay, he knew for a fact he hadn’t washed a dish in at least six days. Or taken the trash out.

 

“No wonder you’re not getting any sleep,” Chela said. “This is practically the red light district.”

 

“It’s close to all the good takeout places!” Leorio said.

 

“You don’t know who’s running those places.” Chela let him go when they got to the door of his walk-up.

 

“Of course I do.” Leorio pulled his lanyard out and swiped his access card. “Everyone knows a crime front is the best place to eat cheap!”

 

“Dumbass!” Chela pulled the door open as soon as the lock clicked and brought him inside with her. “Ugh. Why wouldn’t you just apply for campus housing instead of a place like this?”

 

“This isn’t so bad,” Leorio said. Was it? He couldn’t believe he could actually score a two bedroom place by himself in a town like this.

 

“I can feel the lead in the paint,” Chela said. “Ugh. I hope your family doesn’t know you’re staying in a dump like this.”

 

Leorio had to swallow a lump that had suddenly risen in his throat. Was this place really that bad? With the wood flooring and the stonework and the window seat and everything?

 

Chela’s fussing grew quieter when they got up to his apartment. She put his kettle on and started scooping trash off the counter into the plastic bag from the noodle place on 38th. Leorio tried to sidle in and help her out, only to have her shoo him away with one hand.

 

“Go sit down,” she ordered, pointing to the couch in the living room (which he had bought new and had delivered, by the way).

 

“Yes, ma’am,” Leorio said, deflated.

 

“Have you ever cooked in this apartment?” Chela had opened his pantry and was staring at the contents. “You could feed an army with all this soup!”

 

“I just haven’t had the time,” Leorio said. “Besides, who wants to eat canned soup when you live in a town like this?” He flopped down on the couch and stared up at the ceiling. “Hey, why don’t I just call out and order…”

 

“Whatever you want,” Chela said. “I’m not the one on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”

 

***

 

“Hey.” Leorio jostled Kurapika a little. “Hey, wake up.”

 

Kurapika squeezed their eyes shut tighter for a second and rolled over facedown in Leorio’s lap. They were so tiny. Compact, yes, strong, yes, but tiny, and Leorio didn’t really know what to do with himself. Was he allowed to touch them? Could he brush the hair out of their face?

 

“Uhh…”

 

Kurapika sighed, curled around Leorio like a python for a second, and rolled off of him. “I didn’t think you’d actually let me sleep on you,” they said, kneeling on the ground and straightening their tabard.

 

“Then why didn’t you say so?” Leorio said. “I could have gone and sat somewhere actually comf…”

 

Kurapika leaned forward to kiss him on the mouth. By the time Leorio’s stupid idiot brain could get around to processing what was happening and work on the “kiss Kurapika back” command, Kurapika was standing up and looking around them.

 

“Do you smell that?” they said.

 

“Smell what?” Leorio stood up, sniffing the breeze.

 

Kurapika climbed up on a low-hanging tree branch and shut his eyes. “You’d have to know the smell already, I guess,” they said. “Closetflower doesn’t bloom until after dark.”

 

“Closetflow…”

 

“Ponzu relies on her bees to poison her opponents,” Kurapika said. “A field of night-blooming flowers would be a perfect place to let them feed without drawing attention to herself.” They were already making their way down a game trail to the southeast, half-running silently well ahead of Leorio.

 

“Hey!” Leorio ran through the brush, again horribly conscious about how clumsy he was compared to Kurapika. “You can’t just…”

 

A stick jumped up and caught him by the hem of his slacks. Leorio managed to get half a “Fuck” out of his mouth before he faceplanted in the rocky moss beneath his feet.

 

The footsteps ahead of him stopped. Kurapika let out a sigh and came walking back to Leorio.

 

Before they could help him up, Leorio scrambled to his feet and started dusting himself off. Kurapika was gazing at him with their eyes placid and their mouth turned down.

 

“Don’t you remember what I told you earlier?” Kurapika said. “If your opponent can tell what you want, they can control you.”

 

“Is that why you kissed me?” Leorio said. “Just to mess with my head?”

 

“I wanted to see how you would react,” Kurapika said.

 

“How did you think I was going to react?” Leorio said, throwing his hands up. “You did it! You found me out! You have answered the question! The score is Kurapika one, Leorio zero!”

 

Kurapika rolled their eyes. “If you want to kiss me, just kiss me,” they said. “It’s not my fault you were too slow the first time.”

 

“I wasn’t raised to...hmph.” Leorio glared at Kurapika, reached down, and pulled them close so he could kiss them on the mouth.

 

Kurapika kissed him back. Their lips were thin and cool, and when Leorio put his hands on their hips they went almost all the way around.

 

“You can,” Kurapika whispered in his ear. “If you want to…”

 

“Are you messing with my head again?” Leorio’s hand was already at the waistband of Kurapika’s sweats, but his fingers hesitated.

 

“Like you said.” Kurapika kissed him on the throat. “I already know the answer to my question.”

 

“Uhh…” Leorio was fairly certain he was taking his life into his hands here as he slid one of them down Kurapika’s pants. Their legs were all taut muscle, and he could feel the strength beneath the curve of their ass.

 

“Have you done this before?” Kurapika said.

 

“Of course,” Leorio said, trying to sound more smooth and less, uh, awestruck at being allowed to fumble around between Kurapika’s legs. Half of him wanted to pick Kurapika up and shove them against the nearest convenient tree; the other half was afraid he’d break them or drop them or accidentally swallow them whole.

 

“Hm.” Kurapika’s breath was coming a little faster. “We can’t take too long,” they said.

 

Leorio took that as an invitation to reach down between Kurapika’s legs and find where their flesh yielded and where it hardened. He needed to get down on his knees to reach properly, and once he was down there he reached up to pull Kurapika’s waistband down.

 

“What are...oh.” Kurapika hissed and tensed when Leorio put his lips around their swelling clit. “Oh.”

 

Something in the back of Leorio’s mind hoped that Kurapika was paying attention, because his brain was full of Kurapika. Kurapika’s taste, Kurapika’s voice, the weight of Kurapika’s body in his free hand. He was consumed.

 

“Harder,” Kurapika said. “With your mouth.” One of their hands was buried in Leorio’s hair, clutching it painfully tight.

 

Leorio obeyed. He didn’t think he’d ever see a crack in Kurapika’s composure. Listening to them unravel like this was intoxicating. Kurapika didn’t need to instruct him any further; Leorio just did whatever made their faint whining get higher and more frantic until their knees buckled and their fingers nearly scalped him.

 

Kurapika gripped Leorio’s shoulders for a few seconds to keep from falling to the ground. Their breath was heavy. Their eyes were staring blank ahead of them, not at the ground and not at Leorio.

 

Leorio grinned. “Are…”

“We should go,” Kurapika said. “We’ve made too much noise here.”

 

Had Leorio still had his wits about him, he might have begged Kurapika to help him with the ravenous ache between his legs. But he didn’t have his wits about him. It would take him another half hour before he could speak like a human being again.

 

***

 

“Leorio?” Chela’s voice pulled Leorio out of a half-dreaming fog and back into his living room. “Leorio, did you pass out already?”

 

“Huh?” Leorio sat bolt upright, sending his shades flying across to the coffee table. “Oh, no,” he said. “I was just thinking.”

 

“Sure,” Chela said. She set a hot bowl of soup down on the coffee table in front of him and sat down next to Leorio. “It’s a good thing you’re an upstanding guy, because you suck at lying.”

 

Leorio gave her an awkward smile as he leaned forward to collect his shades. “Thanks for feeding me,” he said.

 

“Thanks for letting someone take you home,” Chela said. “I worry about you.” She was watching him, eyes soft and sparkling and expectant.

 

“Mm.” Leorio put his sunglasses back on his face and grabbed the soup. “Don’t,” he said. “I’ve seen tougher times than this.”

 

“Well, you don’t need to make them any tougher on you than they already are.” Chela laid a gentle hand on his knee.

 

Leorio tensed, but otherwise pretended he didn’t notice the sudden contact. Was she into him? Was she trying to make this happen?

 

If she did, she shouldn’t have fed him. Leorio had never been one to turn down hot food, especially now that he could afford the more edible kinds of canned soup. The vegetables actually tasted like they’d been growing in the ground at some point, and the meat at least had a 30% chance of being real.

 

Chela let out a soft giggle as she got up to fix her own bowl. “You should come to dinner with me and my housemates one of these nights,” she said. “We live up in the student district.”

 

Leorio paused with the bowl still held to his lips. “Uh…”

 

“My roommate’s from a big family up in Yorknew City,” she said. “Her mom sent her to school with this amazing cookbook for feeding a crowd.”

 

“Oh.” Leorio stared at his soup like it was going to tell him what to say. “Her mom must be, uh, really sweet.” What a normal mom thing for a normal, good, living mom to do.

 

“I think she’s a little overbearing,” Chela said, “but she means well.”

 

Leorio gulped the rest of his soup down. Overbearing, huh? Leorio wondered what qualified as “overbearing” to Chela.

 

“How about you?” she said. “You get along okay with your folks?”

 

“Yeah,” Leorio said. “Great.”

 

“Oh.” Chela looked down at the floor, and Leorio realized that he probably hadn’t said that in the right tone. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to…”

 

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Leorio said. “It’s just, uh, I...I’m...it’s a long story.” He shook his head, rested his elbows on his knees. “I mean, my parents are great, we get along great. It’s just…”

 

He told himself he wasn’t going to get weird about the eyeball dissection. That was part and parcel of being a doctor, and he couldn’t make stuff like this personal.

 

Except this wasn’t about the eyeball dissection. This was about half a ring and a recording saying a mailbox hadn’t been set up. This was about six months of writing e-mails to an address that never responded. This wasn’t about Leorio’s personal issues at all. It had never been about his personal issues.

 

“Look,” he said, sitting straight up again. “I...I like working with you,” he said. “But I’m not, uh, I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to get involved with someone else right now.”

 

“Oh…”

 

“It’s complicated,” Leorio said. He stood up and picked up his bowl. “I...I’d just rather not hurt them by accident.”

 

Chela nodded and occupied herself with her soup for a little while. Leorio emptied his bowl and rinsed it out in the sink. His ears had turned red and they were going to stay that way for a while.

 

****

 

“I didn’t realize it could grow that much.” Even as Kurapika wiped their mouth off with the back of their hand, their focus was somewhere far down the path. “Will it get bigger?”

 

“Uh…” Leorio’s blood had not flowed back to his brain yet. He was sitting splay-legged against a tree, his slacks around his ankles and his shades askew on his face. “Uhh...maybe?”

 

“Put your pants back on,” Kurapika said. “If we get attacked, you won’t be able to run.”

 

“Give me a second,” Leorio said. He stood up on shaky legs and shook his pants out as he pulled them back up, praying that there weren’t any centipedes who wanted sloppy seconds. “You can’t just do that to a guy and expect him to hop right up from it.”

 

“Hm.” Kurapika didn’t look back at him. “I’ll take the first watch.”

 

Leorio smiled. Their voice had gotten quieter, mellower. They didn’t move away when Leorio sat down close to them and wrapped an arm around their waist.

 

“You can just sleep on my lap this time,” he said. “You don’t need to trick me into it.”

 

“Hmm.” Kurapika’s tone was sharp, but as they grunted they nestled closer into Leorio’s body. If they noticed him kissing the top of their head, they didn’t respond to it.


End file.
